I hate my periods. I hate having no control over when they start. I hate washing bloodstains out of my clothes and bedding. I hate pain. I hate that I have decades to go before they stop. I hate that I have to put up with them even though I don’t want children anyway.

If your periods make you feel connected to your mother and grandmother and women all around the world throughout time and space, I feel happy for you. If your periods make you feel fertile and womanly, I’m glad. If you accept and celebrate periods as part of the cycle of life and nature, then great.

I do not feel this way. My periods make me unhappy and that isn’t going to change. As a woman, it needs to be OK for me to not like periods. I don’t need to be cheered up or convinced that they’re actually fun and awesome. Herbal medicine and mooncups will not make me feel better, because my feelings are so much deeper than that. I know that as a woman, I am not allowed to be unhappy as my purpose is to service the emotional needs of men and children, not to have any myself. I know that it is unacceptably selfish for any woman to be cross when it is so much more pleasant for those around us when we are happy and smiley. I know, but I don’t care.

You may not show or express pain or discomfort while menstruating. You can even win tennis tournaments when on your period through a combination of will power and expensive branded sanitary products.

Apologies for taking a week for getting round to writing about this(!), but I wanted to share a quick report on Reclaim the Night for those who weren’t able to make it.

Reclaim the Night marches have been taking place around the world since the 1970s, giving women a chance to come together and protest against street harrassment, rape culture, victim blaming and all forms of violence against women. In Cambridge last week, over 100 women met up on Parkers Piece, including a group of FAC women with our two beautiful new banners. The group marched through the streets of Cambridge, making plenty of noise!

Hello FAC people! This friday is reclaim the night cambridge and we are
hoping to have a large party of awesome FAC peeps to represent cambridge
town feminists and march up a storm- remember this isnt just a march for
students! we already have quite a few FAC people going so far [judging by
the facebook group] and this would be a great opportunity to meet others in
FAC who you dont yet know! Bring any noise makers flags or banners you can make/lay your hands on.
To connect with other FAC members and arrange to march together keep track
of the facebook, or if you arent into facebook email me back [i will defo be
going] and we can arrange to meet at the start of the march.

On Sunday, May 6th Francois Hollande, the candidate of the French Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party), was elected President of the French Republic. An article by Alexandra Topping entitled “Vive la Femme?” published on the 8th of May in the Guardian asks whether Hollande is “the first feminist president of France?” If I agree on the necessity of a feminist reading of the election, I think this article is problematic in many aspects, for a large part because of a lack of information on French politics (especially feminismwise). It is partly understandable (the journalist mainly repeats what mainstream media says) and partly problematic (the journalist mainly repeats what mainstream media says). Here are my 4 critical points on the article and the election, as a French feminist woman. All the translations are mine; all the italics are French. I apologise for the fact that most of my links are in French.

When I told a friend that I was going to write an article about the fact that “whatever we do, it’s wrong”, we realized after a few minutes of slightly chaotic dialogue that we didn’t mean the same thing. I meant that whatever a woman does with her sexuality, she is judged and criticized for it. And my friend thought that I meant that whatever, as feminists, we do, it’s never completely right and satisfactory, because it’s never truly intersectional.

I first thought it was a misunderstanding, and we moved on. Then I thought that it was a meaningful misunderstanding, and that I had to take it into account as such: as a sign from the god that doesn’t exist (or from my friend) that my politics are not intersectional enough. And now I think that even though I didn’t think so when it happened, my friend and I were talking about the same thing. Or rather, I should have considered that we were talking about the same thing even though I didn’t. Because we were both talking about how to fight domination – any domination, including the one we exercise on other people, on other women whom we call sisters and who could legitimately call us enemies. I should have considered that we were talking about the same thing because MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT. I cannot separate the two; writing about one means writing about the other, otherwise, yes, it is bullshit.

In this article, I first address various inventive patriarchal criticisms of my sexual and affective behaviour, and then try to make a link between the fact that all these criticisms are very hurtful whoever utters them, and the necessity for my feminism to be truly radical and intersectional.